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Men and Suicide

Before I launch in here today I need to confess that this post has been in my drafts folder for a while now. As most of my readers are aware I’ve known two personal friends who’ve taken their own lives as a result of having their Blue Pill conditioned beliefs set them on a path to self destruction. One of the more important parts of my charter when I started writing was to reach the men who were at their wits’ end in figuring out how to deal with their personal, romantic or married lives that had until then been directed by what their Blue Pill acculturation and their understanding of intersexual dynamics were molded to be. Since I started and stopped and then restarted this topic again there have been a few recent developments in my perspective on men taking their own lives as a result of the Blue Pill’s influence on them.

All of this really began about two months ago while I was engaging in a debate (or what passes for debate) on Twitter with a very unsympathetic woman who thought she’d set me straight about why it is men choose to take their own lives at a far greater rate than women. As it stands today, men are statistically between 4 and 5 times more likely than women to kill themselves. For most Red Pill aware men this is a fairly well known stat and one that gets quoted often enough when women trot out their own stats about abuse or whatever issue they think it is that MRA are ‘confused’ about. They usually get owned when this sort of back and forth goes down, but I’m always drawn to the comparative issues women think are equitable to that of men losing their lives.

Men’s disposability is also nothing new to the manosphere. Sperm is cheap, eggs are scarce and men are expected to sacrifice their lives for the security and betterment of women even in the most patriarchal of prior social orders. It’s always interesting to me that issues of mandatory male conscription into the military (potential death) and the unignorable high male suicide rates are something women still won’t accept as being a pretty raw deal for men. Women’s innate solipsism will still compel women to find some “yeah, but;…” rationalization for men’s disposability. Whenever I bring something like this up the reflexive presumption is that I’m bemoaning men’s victim status for being disposable. However, it’s impossible to discuss male disposability without such a connotation. My issues isn’t one of seeking some equitable disposability for women, but rather it’s drawing attention to the way women react and rationalize away their own part in that disposability.

True Powerlessness

I covered a lot of this in Chivalry vs. Altruism, so I won’t belabor that here, but I will point out the inherent power imbalance in this disposability. I’ve stated in the past that true power is not the control we can exert over the lives of others, but rather the extent to which we have control over the direction of our own lives. When we discuss issues of power between men and women the real, ultimate, loss of that control is in the context of our deaths.

There is no greater powerlessness for men than a lack of control over our own disposability.

Again, this isn’t some cry of victimhood for men – I happen to believe there’s an evolved component in the male psychological firmware that actually predisposes us to sacrificing ourselves in lieu of the security of our women and children. That’s not so much altruism as it is an inborn subroutine for protecting women that triggers in life-threatening situations. When a mass shooter opens fire indiscriminately at a crowd of people it is the men, not the women, who instinctively put their bodies between that gun and women or children, even the one’s they don’t personally know.

In the bigger scope of things, men will always be more disposable than women, and on some level of consciousness women’s hindbrains instinctively understand this. As such, women’s conscious process must find ways to reconcile this understanding in order for them to move on from men’s sacrifices. Sometimes this can manifest in the War Brides phenomenon, but I would argue that in today’s social learning environment of mass media, instant gratification of women’ solipsism and feminine-primary social order, this reconciliation takes some even uglier turns. Today, women have become very efficient in consoling each other’s solipsistic rationalizing of men’s sacrifices. In this environment of default female victimization and presumed oppression even men’s ultimate sacrifice, men’s ultimate powerlessness in their own deaths, cannot ever be consciously or unconsciously acknowledged in a state of fempowerment.

While I had this debate it occurred to me that even men’s suicides could never be attributed to anything less than their own ‘male egos’ by women, thus making them victims of their conditioning into “toxic” masculinity. Essentially, women were arguing that men would put a noose around their necks because they were socially conditioned to do so. Their suicide rate was attributable to their self-pity and inability to be ‘real men’ as some nebulous toxic masculinity had predefined for them. I thought this was kind of ironic when you compare this reasoning to the narrative shift away from ‘toxic’ masculinity to masculinity itself is toxic. This is really a stupid argument when you consider that it’s just another social convention used to absolve women of the guilt associated with men’s sacrifices. Men are hardwired for self sacrifice, but likewise women had need to evolved psychological adaptations to help them clear the red from their life’s ledger in this respect.

So, in the end, it helps if women can fall back on social conventions that put the associated guilt of men’s sacrifices back on the men themselves. Chivalry and traditional masculinity are fine when they serve the Feminine Imperative, but if a man actually gets killed or kills himself as part of that, well, that’s on him then. And this is what I was beginning with in this debate; there will always be a desire for absolution of women’s guilt or complicity in the deaths of men. I should also add that in terms of war and men being drafted women regularly default to the same asinine presumption that if women were running the world that there would be no wars. I won’t dignify that with any deeper analysis than to say that this too is one more (feeble) way of looking for absolution in the sacrifices men make to facilitate women’s reality.

Suicide Solution

That still left the question, why do men take their own lives in such alarmingly high numbers compared to women? I had to do a bit of research on this, but the demographics for male suicide today show some patterns. 7 in 10 suicides are men (majority white) between the ages of 45 and 65. As expected from gynocentric media, the primary reason always cited is men’s so called stubbornness in seeking out psychiatric help before they attempt suicide – again absolving women’s influence of any complicity – but ignoring what would motivate men, and this demographic in particular, to suicide. Again, there’s no attempt to understand the underlying reasons for male suicide, only a stereotypically easy ‘male-stupid’ answer to absolve women’s complicity in it.

There’s a lot to consider and be sensitive of when it comes to male suicide, but I’m going to speculate about a few reasons here coming from a Red Pill perspective. At no other time in western history has there ever been a generation of more purposeless men. From an evolved psychological perspective, men need a function. We are innate idealists. We look outward at the world and like to imagine what could be possible. I believe there is also an innate part of our evolved mental firmware that predisposes us to problem solving and improvisation, and much of that comes as an adaptation to women’s own innate need for men who can display cues of competency.

In Competency I made the case for women’s attraction to men displaying signals of competency, confidence, mastery and creative intelligence as a selected-for survival adaptation. In short, our competency in life, whether stemming from physical prowess, social dominance or creative intelligence is integrally linked with our reproductive success as well as overall life success.

However, at no other time in history has men’s competency been so devalued and so debased; other than perhaps in terms of physical prowess and accommodating the short term (Alpha Fucks) breeding imperatives of women. At no other time in (western) history has the equity in what a man can provide or create or solve been so implicitly unnecessary or superfluous to women. When we consider the rates of college enrollment and graduation of women compared to that of men, when we consider the practical problems that men used to solve, our utility has never been less needed – or at least that’s the zeitgeist of today.

We read about how men need to accept this new social reality – that our need for purpose and function is no longer needed or as valued – and we need to change our headspace about it as if it were something men might simply turn off. This is the result of equalist beliefs that anything gender-specific is something learned rather than the innate firmware we were born with. But we cannot simply change our minds about needing a function. We evolved to be problem solvers, women talk, men do, but now we are expected to accept that men are obsolete.

Loss of Utility

In Relational Equity I made a case for men investing too much of their egos into what intrinsic (and extrinsic) value they believe their respective women ought to appreciate about themselves. Under the old books, old social contract this equity may have had some conditional value to women, but as a buffer against Hypergamy today there is very little a man might consider value-added equity (unless it’s exceedingly rare or exceedingly valued) as a hedge against Hypergamy. Before any defeatist critics tell me how not all women are like that, yes, I get it, there are a lot of variables to consider here, but the equation and the reality doesn’t change – relational equity, overall, is no insurance against Hypergamy. It is also no insurance against women’s security and providership needs being met by resources that come from outside that relationship. I’m not considering this because I’m trying to depress any man, but it is vitally necessary to consider when we look at reasons why 45-65 year old men are predisposed to higher rates of suicide and higher rates of alcoholism and opioid abuse.

I would argue that a major contributing factor to high male suicide rates finds its origins in men’s need for purpose, function and accomplishment during this phase of life. Every day I read an article about how men my own age are dropping out of social discourse. I mentioned a Boston Globe article about just this phenomenon in Male Control. In some respects I can understand that despite the unprecedented connectivity we enjoy today men really don’t seek out bonds with other men. This is primarily due to the fact that men need a common purpose in order to form these bonds. Again, this is just how we’re wired. Women intentionally schedule time to simply interact with their same-sex friends just for the sake of communicating and enjoying the act of communicating. Men need function or a common purpose to come together. We need an activity or a problem to solve and then we communicate and form bonds.

Women talk, men do. This is a well studied fact; our brains and, by extension, social networks largely center on purpose and function. Now, lets presume that in spite of having literally all the information in the world at our finger tips we remove all need for the utility that men are wired to provide to not just women, but the larger scope of Society. We get a generation of men on the outside looking in. Only the most creative, resourceful and motivated of men can really utilize, much less master, all that this information has to offer him. And even a portion of those men can really see past the antipathy of their supposed obsolescence to do something truly meaningful or masterful. As the saying goes, most men live lives of quiet desperation, but in the modern era these men are demonstrably useless. And I mean that in a functional sense; once a Beta man has been wrung of his utility to women, he ceases to be able to convince his hindbrain that he can build, improvise or solve things.

Once a man is stripped of his usefulness, once it’s made clear that all of the equity he believed would support his relationship has been erased after so long, men will still resort to practical, deductive solutions. That solution may be suicide when weighed with the prospect of having to rebuild himself in a new context; and even if he did would he just be building a new ‘him’ based on his old belief set?

When my brother in-law committed suicide it seemed to me at the time to be the most logical end he would come to. He was a man very steeped in Blue Pill ideals, but he was also a man who prided himself on what he could do – and if he didn’t know how to do something he was always a fast learner. He literally built his life, and expectations of a future life, around the relational equity he believed defined him as a man. He was very invested in the old books, old social contract that rooted a man’s attractiveness and quality in what it was he could do. What he built for himself and his wife defined his identity.

All of that 20+ years of building equity and an identity based on it was erased for him in the space of about six months. But it was more than the 20 years he’d been saving, building, solving and refining, it was a perceived future he believed would be lived out for the rest of his life that got erased.

To me, at that time, his suicide made absolutely perfect sense from a male-deductive logic perspective. What didn’t make sense was all of the endless rationalizations I heard from his family, friends, his kids, his Ex (my now widowed sister in-law) about why they thought he went through with it when it was plain for anyone who wanted to confront the truth to see. A lot of these rationales were almost verbatim the same that the article I linked used. “If only men would reach out when they have suicidal thoughts”, any and every rationale that might absolve his Ex of the guilt, and still more that were meant to console her (he must’ve been mental ill) though in the end she really didn’t need it.

My brother in-law made a practical decision not an emotional one, and while I wouldn’t presume to say that a guy’s emotional state isn’t very influential in his suicide, how he comes to the decision is very much attributable to men’s deductive nature. He showed no outward signs of emotional distress. In fact, right up to his hanging himself he was in very good spirits and seemingly accepting of the fact that the wife he lived his life for was going to be leaving him soon. He was very matter of fact in a way that men are when they’ve resolved something for themselves. When a guy seems to be taking things in stride we don’t want to create a problem where we see none.

When we look in this context at the high rate of male suicide in this age demographic we begin to see how men come to this decision. Everything they’ve built up to 45-65 years of age is now debased, devalued or simply erased. All of the value and equity they’ve committed their lives to – doing the right thing according to their Blue Pill conditioning – is as if it never mattered. So they’re confronted with a choice, rebuild themselves (hopefully in a new Red Pill aware paradigm), reconstruct a new life and tough it out, or, simply, pragmatically erase themselves.

Personally, I’ve had at least two occasions where I’ve been confronted with rebuilding myself. It’s a tough prospect, make no mistake, especially when you’re Red Pill aware and understand the reality behind having to rebuild a life from scratch after so much investment in plans and projects you truly believed in when you made them. My father had to confront this rebuilding too at around 55 years of age, but rather than rebuild or kill himself I watched him slowly decay into a man I never knew could exist as my dad.

Zeroed Out

I apologize if this topic is a bit of a downer, but I think it ought to be part of any Red Pill aware man’s understanding that at many points in our lives we will be confronted with the prospects of having to rebuild ourselves. Failure, rejection and disappointment will happen for you, that’s just part of a man’s life, and it’s easy to rattle off platitudes about how many times you get back up being the measure of a man. But what I’m saying is there will be times when total reconstruction of your life will be a necessity.

You will be zeroed out at some point, and how you handle this is a much different situation than any temporary setback. This zeroing out is made all the more difficult when you confront the fact that what you believed to be so valuable, the equity you were told was what others would measure you by, was all part of your Blue Pill conditioning. At that point you need to understand that there is most definitely a hope for a better remake of yourself based on truths that were learned in the hardest way.

To end this I’m going to quote the comment of a man I met when I spoke at the 21 Convention in September. I won’t use his name, but after we talked he confessed that he was the commenter here. He’d made the trip to the convention to meet me face to face, to thank me for my work and gave me permission to use his example in a post. I won’t quote it entirely, but you can read the whole thing here. His situation is an example of, and inspiration for, everything I’ve illuminated in this essay

After a long marriage I divorced the mother of my children. A couple of years later, after some casual dating, I met a woman I would come to describe as my soulmate. I got married young – but this time, with all my infinite wisdom gained over the years – I was finally wise enough to pick a woman I was super compatible with.

We were together for a few years and even lived together. Things started out great and it was mostly smooth sailing until we moved in together – at which time I slowly allowed myself to be betaized in a slow motion, excruciating painful way.

About a month after breaking up with her I fully planned to commit suicide. I wrote a long letter explaining my rationalization and took other affirmative steps towards going through with it. About a week after I wrote the note – with D(eath) Day fast approaching – I took a break from getting my affairs in order to surf the net. I stumbled upon an Ask Reddit thread that was bad mouthing various subreddits. Some feminazi or male feminist mentioned the Red Pill subreddit as an example of a subreddit filled with craziness, and I decided to check what all of the fuss was about. Now

I’m not a religious man, but I will never rule out divine intervention. The timing of finding TRP – by complete coincidence no less – couldn’t have been more fortuitous. I stayed up all night reading the side bar – Rollo’s essays having the deepest effect on me – and everything…just…clicked….Talk about connecting the dots! Wow! It was very much like a come to Jesus moment. It was like divinity revealed secret knowledge to me just when I needed it the most – knowledge that gave me hope and very well may have saved my life. This all went down not really that long ago in actual time – but from where I metaphorically stand now it seems like an eternity.

Stay strong my friends, you can rebuild yourself even in the face of being zeroed out.

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677 comments

“My issues isn’t one of seeking some equitable disposability for women, but rather it’s drawing attention to the way women react and rationalize away their own part in that disposability.”

“There is no greater powerlessness for men than a lack of control over our own disposability.”

“We are innate idealists. We look outward at the world and like to imagine what could be possible. I believe there is also an innate part of our evolved mental firmware that predisposes us to problem solving and improvisation, and much of that comes as an adaptation to women’s own innate need for men who can display cues of competency.”

“Failure, rejection and disappointment will happen for you, that’s just part of a man’s life, and it’s easy to rattle off platitudes about how many times you get back up being the measure of a man. But what I’m saying is there will be times when total reconstruction of your life will be a necessity.”

“My father had to confront this rebuilding too at around 55 years of age, but rather than rebuild or kill himself I watched him slowly decay into a man I never knew could exist as my dad.”

I was with you until the zeroed out bit. I’ve read alot of your archives. I m so thankful for them. When I stumbled here I realized I had to zero myself out and rebuild. As a result I’m a 37 yo full time college student. Life is good on many levels. The timing of article is perfect I started asking women out and dating again. After taking some time to understand and live red pill. The blue pill shit still crops up at times but it’s usually accompanied with an adrenaline rush wich is a danger sign for.. Wrong move! I listen to it now.

I want to make sure I understand this. When I open myself up to dating, commitment and possibly marriage I am opening the door to be zeroed out? Is that a harsher way of saying life is always changing and if I’m in a relationship this is something I need to be prepared for? I can see how for me my flag football team and friends can help because we keep in touch and bond over trying to win championships. This makes dating and relationships with women sound risky. Not the garden variety risky, I mean really fucking risky.

It makes me wonder how much does one invest in a relatioship. I know there’s no such thing as the 1 and women can’t really fufill men. Maybe this zeroed out comment explains why we cannot allow ourselves to fall into that mind-set. If you know from jump what to expect from a relationship then you can face being zeroed out without feeling suicidal.

The being zeroed out part is, as my understanding goes, a by-product of your own decisions. Men shoulder both the burden of performance and of responsibility with respect to their relationships. This is why on many fronts, having multiple plates is easier to having an LTR with one girl. However, one might also state a quality girl would not subject herself to being plated, although, the counter argument exists that any girl would subject themselves to any harem for the right guy.

I do know the Mathew principle, where the rich get richer while the poor get poorer, applies with sexual market value. That male model who has life by the horns? He’s attracting the quality women, or so it seems. I do know Men have the ability to increase their market value if they invest in themselves.

The only method I have come to know where a man can do this is precisely after he has been zeroed out. It’s where I am now.

To summarize, having success in relationships as a man requires a keen sense of self-knowledge, self-development and self-discipline, and being absolutely ruthless in maintaining all three at healthy levels, always.

Rollo, thanks for one of the best ever; I’ve not had any pangs to off myself but it’s easy to see how it could be a viable option

from the muse commenter:

“The biggest price to pay in the divorce wasn’t money or stress or love. It was the loss of all the people. People who were important to me even if I wasn’t as important to them. Bottom line I have concluded is that I’m expendable.”

and you:

“But it was more than the 20 years he’d been saving, building, solving and refining, it was a perceived future he believed would be lived out for the rest of his life that got erased.”

these are piercing to a man’s heart and soul; the pain and anguish is indescribable; I wish it upon no one

Got zeroed at 56… Been a long road back and ending it all was often at the back of my brain. I went Monk Mode and figured most of it out, it’s a daily education just watching other men drain away their lives, a slave to pussy that wishes they would die and save the bother of a divorce.

Maybe Rollo will weigh back in, but I think zeroed out in this context is simply to point out what he says here:

“Failure, rejection and disappointment will happen for you, that’s just part of a man’s life,…”

It can have everything to do with women, or nothing at all to do with women; it’s just an observation that pertains to all living men. When it happens, rebuild.

@Rollo

This is a great essay, not demotivating to me at all but rather illuminating. A way to look at oneself, but also the men one knows and associates with, to be able to recognize what is going on and why – and make effective counter moves to help yourself or others. Most of what I’ve seen about men’s suicides did not cover any of what you’ve written here.

This is one of the best, if not the perfect, times of the year for this posting. If just one man reads it and finds a toehold in his life to perch on for even a moment while regains his point of origin, that will be a great thing.

This must have been a difficult one to write. Thanks for doing that Rollo.

This is a difficult subject because, personally, I think that suicide should be legal; especially for the elderly. With that said, the main reason that people commit suicide is a lack of hope. It’s the imaginative ideal that gets us all out of bed in the morning. Hope, however, springs from heroism, the idea that something really great can happen. But male heroism is politically incorrect nowadays. Raising a family is no longer heroic; and being white is a political crime.

I’m currently reading a book published in 1905. It’s called “Hero worship and the Heroic in History.” by Thomas Carlyle. The author lists several kinds of heroes, such as Prophet, Poet, Priest, etc. But you can take his ideas much further and say that all men are heroic, each in a different way. If that heroism can be defined and expressed, then hope will always exist.
Imagine Wagner’s “Ring Cycle” woven semantically into the fabric of our lives.

I’m also reading another book entitled “Worlds of Pain” by Lillian Rubin. She gives a very poignant account of the daily struggles faced by the middle and lower classes. What really hurts them most, she explains, is the lack of heroism; which is now available only to social justice warriors. The result is widespread social alienation; especially among men who depend on work for so much of their identity. At stake here is the choice between communism and capitalism.
Communism promises anonymous happiness; independently of other people; Capitalism promises personal happiness as a heroic extension of family and friends. It’s a huge difference.

As a Capitalist, I recommend that we bring back our heroes. How? By teaching people how to get rid of guilt and anxiety, and how to glory in the everyday tasks that (right now) seem so mundane. We can have heroic truck drivers, heroic mothers, and heroic welders. In the world of heroes, there’s a new opportunity around every corner. But the left doesn’t want this to happen. That’s why they have tried to corner the market on heroism. They know that a group of heroic men, working in unison, would never allow communism to succeed. And there is no group that they fear more than white men; the original heroes of old. So let’s bring back the Aryan heroic tradition in all its glory; and the Communists be damned.

I’ve been there, on the brink, twice. Hopefully never again. What I can tell you is that most guys, at least myself, base our self-identities on competence. It is when we feel that we lack the ability to improve ourselves and our lives that give us a fundamental sense of incapability, a lack of competence, that can drive us to suicide. Men, being the Heinleinian creatures that we are, feel the need for a fundamental level of competence. Denied this, and life drains of meaning and purpose for us.

This is the real reason why the liberal-left, and socialism, is so destructive for us. Ask again why so many of us voted for Trump.

Thanks a lot Rollo. This one really spoke to me. I recently broke up with my ex girlfriend about three months ago and it still hurts because she was the first girl I had sex with.

I’m 26 years old. I had no success with women until around 23 when I came across the manosphere. I started dating my ex at age 24 and things were going great. I’d pass her shit tests, implement passive dread and stand my ground on certain principles. I learned all of this from Rollo and I saw how it helped our relationship grow. She really liked me but most importantly, she respected me. She looked up to me and I felt like I was actually helping her become a better person. I became more attached to her and considered marrying her to seal the deal. But there were warning signs I couldn’t overlook no matter how hard I tried: She first had sex at 14. She had anal sex with her previous boyfriend and that really turns me off. She came from a broken family and was raised by her mom. These red flags should have made me run away but I was too emotionally attached. I kept thinking I could save her and that our marriage would be great if I continued doing what I was doing.

But I heard too many stories from men where they ignored the warning signs and 5, 10, 15 years down the line, she ends up divorcing him because of a past ex or simply because she became unhappy. This scared me and I knew I didn’t want that. I ended up breaking up with her three months ago after a year and a half of being in a relationship. I’m still torn because I still have thoughts that I could have saved her.

I tried having sex with other women but I stopped because I could only see her face during the act. It really tore me up on the inside. I know it sounds so trivial to other men who have been through worse but I even started having suicidal thoughts because I felt like I failed in my purpose which was to save her. I didn’t expect to go through these emotions after breaking up as well as questioning if I made the right decision. I’m starting to pick up the pieces and respect myself and my values but goddammit if my emotions aren’t telling me otherwise.

Currently 25, recently zeroed out after a few years in a relationship. The hardest part to explain to people is that, it’s not necessarily the love of the woman that you miss, it’s the feeling of taking care of someone. The feeling of being there to provide for and be needed by someone else after doing so for so long. You state it very well here:

“Once a man is stripped of his usefulness, once it’s made clear that all of the equity he believed would support his relationship has been erased after so long, men will still resort to practical, deductive solutions.”

Being stripped of usefulness is the best way to describe it. When you put so much effort into building something, in this case a relationship, and it just disappears, it’s very difficult to figure out what to do next. I’m very glad I found this blog while I am still so young. You’re doing amazing work Rollo, keep it up. I truly believe that this post, and this blog, will save lives.

OK, this isn’t the comment I intended to make. Rollo thank you for the OP, and I’m sure we will experience some deep and thoughtful comments regarding the subject. Therapeutic

But I need to interject something I’ve been trying to get across for years. Just a thought I think guys need to consider.

I’m always tell men to ” mind your mind “. I am talking about watching what you feed your brain because it can lead to your undoing under stressful circumstance.

We get quite a few pronouncements concerning communists/capitalist/Marxist… And the like. And usually the people putting this forth have a scary, deep belief in these man made concepts. Passionate belief in man made theory and concepts. Basing your worth on outside forces.

Warning to our younger readers, read the op again and again until you have it fairly memorised.

Your number one objective is to protect yourself from having your mind snatched by the promise of some kind of reward or measure of self worth by devotion to some kind of societal, man made concept designed to gain control of your thoughts and manipulate your beliefs.

Mental. Point. Of. Origin. must remain focused on yourself. You must become acquainted with being comfortable with yourself, by yourself. Your a capitalist? Means shit at the end of the day. Your a communist? Life actually gives no fucks at all. When these things fail you, they will just be outside things failing. The Pope shot 80 people in Vatican City? That’s awful and has not a damn thing to do with you and your ability to improve your life.

One problem I’ve seen in many men is that they put way too much of themselves into the thoughts, beliefs and opinions of others. Listen up, people are fallible and will fail you in some way, at some point. This is only ever a negative is you only have others at your center.

Fuck a label. The feat is to be in this world and not of this world. Then its a bit easier to accept people and life as you find it. And in the worst of times, ” a bit easier ” can be a hell of a lot.

This post really hit home for me rollo. I’ve followed you for a while but always read comments rather than leaving one. This post however, has had such an impact considering what happened this evening. I had a fight with my wife, a girl i married because we got pregnant and due to my conservative upbringing, it was the right thing to do. To be completely honest, we both know why we did this, we were on the verge of a breakup after she discovered that id been cheating for a yr and an half of out 2 yr relationship. I kept her around because there was that part of me that wanted to make things right with her because she was a great girl to me, in all the ways that men like. She is also a great mom to our now 5 month old son. I cant take these things away from her…however, i know she still secretly resents me for cheating on her, and because of her upbringing, she married me because she wanted to avoid the stigma of being a single black woman with a bastard child. I know she resents me for that as well. I was spinning plates when i met her and she stuck around because she was fun to be around and because i was still a blue pill idealist as far as the best candidate to build a home with.

She is a great mom and partner, but i can tell that theres been a loss of status for me. I maintain my frame but ive come to believe that any man who proposes to a woman, marries her and works to maintain his family, is headed for the zeroing out. Being a husband is not an alpha move, no matter how hard you try. Being a present and good father further reduces your “alpha” status in her eyes. it is my belief that It is hard wired in women that any men who marry them submitted to their frame and are therefore no longer alpha. Just to be clear, we are both in the military, i work out religiously, i am in decent shape, i am respected in my job, and am a very social guy. However, to her, i’m this guy she got to give up his hoes and now gets to make decisions based on her input.

Anyway, during the fight she calmly and casually said, “JNK” you are lame. You have always been lame…i thought you were different but you fooled me. Now i know better.”

Now…ive read countless accounts of married guys saying that their wife revealing that she no longer respected them was a shock so to be perfectly honest I wasn’t stunned at the moment but as i was driving around to cool off i realized that i was now that guy. Married to a girl who felt true and real disdain for, a woman who had no capacity to appreciate the nights i stayed up with our child so she could get some sleep, the nights i cooked dinner, cleaned the house to “help out”. wow!

I understand the only way to really reset things is to employ a nuclear option, and that is my plan. As i was driving, i realized that i had lost all my frame, i had become such a “good” guy, a “nice” husband and therefore ripe for disrespect.

Great timing rollo. I needed this tonight. I have a lot of work to do.

mark baxter blocked me on twitter because he mistook an impersonal you as a personal you when he brought of the topic of older men who are accomplished in job position and what they have but their lives don’t have much to it except maintaining a well manicured lawn.
So many friendships in general, in fact most people’s social life, revolve around work. Their friends they make, the people they interact with, most of their day, is taken up with work and the people they work with. When men seek to fulfill the pathway that’s expected of them to get the house with the vaulted ceiling in the suburbs and the two suv’s, with that being devalued, with so many men being blue pill they frame their life goals as being able to eventually get the girl they finally qualified for,they set themselves up to be the man in the garage.
For men that go thru a divorce it can be exacerbated because it’s common for their friends who remain married to see less of them because the group dynamic changes when he becomes the only non married person in a group that customarily all hung out together as married friends. Lots of men do everything they believe to create a fulfilling life, get the house, the kids in all kinds of activities, the job title, but forget about creating parts that are for them. A well kept lawn is something they substitute for it, I think because it’s an activity that feels less of a symbol like the suv or the luxury sedan., but they buy the car. The lawn is more like something they make. Fewer and fewer men learn about fixing things, and in a throw away society there’s fewer and fewer things that are fixable. Many items that are used today, manufacturers don’t even has the network in place to support fixing things. Something breaks, you just buy another one.
They end forgetting to create a life where they do things for themselves.

Rollo, an extremely important piece that I have bookmarked for future reference. And I must say how courageous of you it was to include that pertinent quote at the end, knowing how close your brother in law was to the red pill truths that might have saved him as well.

I actually did a phone consult with Rollo after going through a terrible break up and losing a job within about the same month. The job loss was due to the breakup and I was simply in a downward spiral of depression. The girl I was dating had some serious red flags that I ignored. She flipped my world upside down. I had been promoted no less than 6 months before getting fired. I was drinking daily and counting down the days until I ran out of money for rent before I figured I would leave the city I was living in and head back home to live with my parents. I was 27 when this was all going down.

As this article alludes to, it wasn’t the actual EVENTS that hit me the hardest (loss of a relationship and a job) it was all of these people who I thought cared about me just fading away. I thought this girl loved me. She moved on very quickly. I thought I had numerous friends at the office. NONE of them would take my phone calls or outreach after I lost my job. I was suddenly all alone in a city that I had spent 3 years carving out a life for myself to live in…and none of these people seemed to care. I could not wrap my mind around it. I mean I literally couldn’t make sense of it, logically. The cognitive dissonance I was experience was sharp, intense and seemed to be never ending.

To make matters worse, my Father, who was 67 years old at the time had a nervous breakdown. This happened about 2 months after I got hit by what happened to me. His collapse was a direct result of a comment a coworker made to him. My Dad is retired (taught school for 30 years) but now ushers college football games in our home town. My Dad has always had trouble hearing. He’s worn hearing aids for as long as I can remember. Some older co worker made fun of my Dad publicly for not being able to hear at work. I have no idea why, but that comment did it and my dad finally snapped. Spent 2 weeks in a psychiatric ward…I do believe it goes back to that feeling of thinking you no longer have a purpose as a man.

During all of this I did consider suicide. Rollo’s time on the phone w/ me helped snapped me out of it a bit. I didn’t mention to him on the call that I was feeling so low. But I did tell him how much his articles had helped me over he years. I have had a tremendously difficult time wrapping my head around the solipsism of women, particularly when dealing with things such as men’s deaths and male depression. It’s damn near inhuman behavior but with the help of the RP and guys like Rollo, I am learning to channel that anger into true understanding of human and the female nature. You simply can’t be mad at women. They are what they are. They are biologically different than us and I refuse to spend my time getting angry at them.

What I can do is embrace reality and truth of my existence. Being a man is hard. It’s damn hard. But you know what? That’s what I take pride in. I take pride in grinding it out and dusting myself off every single time I get hit. That’s what being a man is all about. I will never give in because I don’t want to give other people the satisfaction of my defeat. We as men need to have compassion and BOTH empathy and sympathy for men who feel like all hope is lost. We can’t make fun of them or ignore them. We must play our part. Red Pill knowledge is essential for that type of mission.

I’ll never forget the first time I saw my dad in that psychiatric ward. Going into it I wasn’t sure what I was going to see. I was scared I’d see my Dad in a state that I wouldn’t be able to handle emotionally. But when I got there I saw him in the activity room with his hospital scrub like pants on and a shirt he had on the night he was committed. He also had his “fall risk” tag on his wrist. But you know what he was doing? He was making a puzzle. The same kind of thing he would do around our house. He was standing up straight and was intently focused on what he was doing.

I’ve never been more proud of my Father.

I walked over to him and gave him a hug. I told him I loved him and that I was so proud of him. I told him that we were BOTH going to make it. I told him that no matter what this life throws at us we’re going to be OK. Then I helped him finish the puzzle.

Not sure why this got cut out of my previous post in this thread, but I’m happy to say that my Dad is BACK ushering college football games and I’m living in a new city with a new job. I actually live directly next store to my best friend that I grew up with in Indiana. Life is good 🙂

I’m leaning towards giving my dad a copy of TRM… and my soon-to-be married cousin) … though I know it may be used against me as a manifesto for gossip of why I’m such an asshole in my family — (my sister is BPD and my dad’s alpha-but-blue-pill weakness is spoiling my mother who’s actually high quality).

I think I’ll do it anyway. But alas, my next project is to create red pill media (I’m an artist and author) and connect red pill artists and thinkers who can lead forward the move towards male empowerment/female virtue.

Shout out to all here… what Rollo’s doing here is great but everyone can do their part.

I’ve been a mentor and attraction coach, literally changed lives in the process. It’s easier than you think. And I suspect a fantastic opportunity for future anti-fragile employment (what’s more valuable that bringing a man from the brink of suicide and life regret? And what’s more valuable than RP media for leisurely awesome FUN consumption?)

Great post.

PS… Rollo certainly changed my life (added the RP side of the coin to balance out my PUA gynocentrism … and now I’m a fair bit of a monster).

I think one of the things to keep in mind about being zeroed out is that often it’s actually the best alternative. What I mean is that most of us will, at some point, come to a crossroads type place in some aspect of our lives where the best option is letting the course we are on zero out and starting over in a different direction. The issue is that this is never the *easiest* option — the easiest option is normally staying on the same course and petering it on down the road — in which case we may eventually get to a point where the course *forces* us to zero it out (ie, we have no choice), or we may never get there and just keep on petering down a road which really isn’t going anywhere but is the path of least resistance. That path of least resistance can often be deadly in itself, because it essentially leads nowhere, and usually runs down a man slowly over the course of time. And if it does end up if a forced zeroing out rather than a controlled, or voluntary, zeroing out, that’s where you can end up in a really fast downward spiral due to a perceived (and partially real) loss of control.

It’s usually best to really consider things carefully when you find yourself at a crossroads in life. It may be best to voluntarily zero out the course you are on and rebuild, rather than continuing on that course until it forces you off unvoluntarily, or until it wears you down into a shell of your former self.

Great post, Rollo. I’m in the middle of the age cohort you describe – 55 and twice divorced. And I could have been one of the statistics if I hadn’t gotten out of my second marriage about 5 years ago. At the time, I was suffering from physical ailments that reflected the hopelessness and despair of my situation – regular headaches and heartburn, and a pain in my shoulder blade that resulted in a tingling sensation shooting down my right arm. A month after I moved out and got the divorce process started, the headaches and heartburn almost completely disappeared (and I never get either of them anymore), and after 3 months, the pain and tingling disappeared, never to return. My second wife became morbidly obese (almost 400 lbs!) and spent me into several bankruptcies. I had the mistaken impression that I couldn’t get a divorce while paying back a chapter 13 or I would have left years earlier, and the blue pill notion that I could change her by setting the proper examples of financial responsibility and taking care of myself physically. I was wrong, nobody ever changes unless the drive to change comes from within.

You’ve mentioned previously that it typically requires some kind of interaction with a woman, usually a very negative one, for a blue-pill man to take the red pill. That describes me very well. During the period while I was struggling to get out of my second marriage, I fell hard for a co-worker, who I would describe at the time as being a solid 6-7 (5’4″ and 109 lbs), despite her age at the time (39). She managed to destroy me with just one sentence that set me back a couple of years, though I won’t get into details about that. Suffice it to say that Rollo’s articles here describe her quite well. Interesting is that she had a father who committed suicide several years before I knew her, and a few months after she ripped my heart out, her brother also committed suicide. I don’t know all the details, but I would venture an educated guess that both cases were over a woman (I’m actually pretty sure that led to her brother’s suicide). After her brother hung himself, I was one of the first people she called, probably hoping I would help rescue her emotionally. Little did she realize that she totally destroyed any chance of that happening several months earlier, as well as any chance we’d get together for a relationship. Probably a good thing for me, now I can move on with my life without her around to kill my dreams.

Reading a lot of manosphere articles, the subject of Game keeps coming up, and how I need to learn Game and spin plates, etc. And I have to ask why? What the hell for? So I can attract a lot of mediocre, overweight, divorced, 40-something, used-up women who hate men and have outrageously high standards, but refuse to live up to those standards themselves? I have a hell of a lot more important things to do with my life and study rather than striving for poosy that just isn’t worth the effort, and would screw up my life yet again if I gave them the opportunity. Yes, I’m leaning towards MGTOW.

Right now my life could go one of two directions, depending on how the next few years go. I’m moving back to my old hometown to take care of my aging mother and pay off debt (several years of that to go). Then I’m either going to rebuild myself with a new career (with Colonel Sanders as my inspiration – he was in his 60s when he started KFC), or call it a working life and retire early on social security, living a frugal life of minimalism in an RV and exploring the country (particularly the area I most enjoy, the Rockies), wintering in Florida with my daughters and grandkids. Either way, I’m finally in a position to make myself happy, with the hopelessness and despair gone, and seeing women for what they truly are (self-centered creatures who can never love me the way I want to be loved, and will never be the key to my happiness).

No, mental illness isn’t the reason for higher middle-age male suicide rates. Hopelessness and despair is. And you have the power to fix that, if you’re brave enough to do so.

Brilliant post.
Friend of mine of 35 years killed himself (not over woman as long as I can say, no note left) in August this year, and not a day goes by I wouldn’t think of reasons etc.., so this text resonates with me quite a lot now. Thank you.

….

@ Vlad
why would a woman share with her current man details of what exactly sexually she used to do with her exes? To me this reeks of utter disrespect. Men being quite visual, does she not realize that by telling she brings a mental picture of her being fucked in ass into your conscious awareness? I think big part of how men manage to deal with sexual past of their women is exactly that they just don’t go there mentally, to ponder details, to visualize, to discuss. Call it defense mechanism, denial, whatever. To remind a man about other man’s dick inside his woman can be dangerous, there are some powerful forces in his psyche and biology that can be triggered by that. And if she’s the one who does that, maybe even in a nonchalant conversational manner… something wrong there in my opinion, what’d be the point of reminding her man about how who used to bang her. Unless she’s testing your response, then the proper reaction probably could be something like “I never intended to marry you anyways, so that’s cool..” Or unless you asked her yourself of course.

@Sentient – talk about missing my point and taking the quote out of context. You forgot the most important part – “I have a hell of a lot more important things to do with my life and study…” I may very well build a business. For me. For the residual income that would sustain me through my old age. The business I have in mind (no details here) would require a hell of a lot of work and study to have any kind of success. Who the hell has time to chase tail, especially when the number of qualified women continues to shrink every year? I only have so many productive years left before the aging process robs me of the ability to do so. I’m not going to spend it chasing women when I have a hell of a lot more important things to do. No amount of poosy is worth giving up what I really want out of life. None. You can chase all the tail you want, it’s just not important to me anymore, and as I’m discovering, not worth my time and effort.

I’d like to know more about your situation to really see where your behaviour became beta, if you could be more specific. I think it’s an interesting situation. I don’t agree with cheating on ones wife but that is alpha nonetheless, but I’m not sure at what point you fell off afterwards.

@Sentient

I’m sure even Rollo has said in pasts post that simply settling down with a woman means you lose value to a certain agree, no matter how strong you’re game is and how red pill you are.

Excellent essay. I faced a moment of decision of my own a couple years back at my last divorce and these were indeed the demons I grappled with.

I do think far too many men isolate themselves or create life situations were they hit the ceiling of what they can achieve at work/in their careers and allow life to numb them into a slow loss of hope. Then a divorce comes and wham, the last role that was sustaining them is taken away and they end up staring into the abyss of their own mortality with little to shield them from despair.

I see this where I work – men topped out in the promotion chain realizing they’ve hit a certain age and “up” is no longer an option – only a slow countdown to retirement. Then at some point a divorce comes along and with it the distancing from their children and serious hit to their standard of living (4 bedroom house? Yeah, 1 bedroom condo from now on buddy!). If they don’t have another source of purpose in their life (friends, religion, politics, a hobby, etc) they are pretty much screwed.

Spreading that message of “having a life’s purpose for them” is about as important a thing to save men’s lives in modern society as I can imagine. Anyone doing it is doing the Lord’s work.

That said, we need to avoid selling a male version of “Eat, Pray, Love” (not that Rollo is doing that, but some do) where we just join the “everyone for themselves” chorus of societal decay that exists to push us all (man, woman, and child) apart from each other and into the hands of darkness and/or the state.

I got your point perfectly. You think you have tobput ina ton of effort to get inferior women. Not true. And the choice is not binary between work and women. False dichotomy redolent of much buffering.

“That said, we need to avoid selling a male version of “Eat, Pray, Love” (not that Rollo is doing that, but some do) where we just join the “everyone for themselves” chorus of societal decay that exists to push us all (man, woman, and child) apart from each other and into the hands of darkness and/or the state.”

@Schajw: as someone who is leaning towards MGTOW, don’t you find it strange that the things that you have that are better to do are basically 1. taking care of your aging mother 2. taking care of your daughters?

You should meditate on whether you really have your own Mental Point of Origin…

“Some people think they can find satisfaction in good food, fine clothes, lively music, and sexual pleasure. However, when they have all these things, they are not satisfied. They realize happiness is not simply having their material needs met. Thus, society has set up a system of rewards that go beyond material goods. These include titles, social recognition, status, and political power, all wrapped up in a package called self-fulfillment.”

Our modern world is based on this^, in a feminine primary social order, men may be promised these, but when it is taken away every man will find himself at zero.

“Attracted by these prizes and goaded on by social pressures, people spend their short lives tiring body and mind to chase after these goals. Perhaps this gives them the feeling that they have achieved something in their lives, but in reality they have sacrificed a lot in life. They can no longer see, hear, act, feel, or think from their hearts. Everything they do is dictated by whether it can get them social gains. In the end, they’ve spent their lives following other people’s demands and never lived a life of their own. How different is this from the life of a slave or a prisoner?”

Remaining at zero is not an option for everyone, in reality everything we have can be stripped away in a millisecond. Everything is on loan. There is one exception, what a man knows in his heart to be right and correct, his own mental point of origin, all the skills and systems he has mastered or created. These cannot be taken away, and are the greatest resource we have.

Stay strong my friends, you can rebuild yourself even in the face of being zeroed out.

“Endurance is what gives rise to nobility of purpose. It is the foundation of character, the fountain of resiliency, the facilitator of hope. That which persists, endures . . .”
– Ivan Throne, The Nine Laws

I am 28 and since age 24 I have been having recurrent suicidal thoughts, so I thank you for this post, Rollo.

The thing is, I have suicidal thoughts but I am not suicidal as in wanting to kill myself right now. I am quite horrified at having to leap off a bridge or stuff like that to be honest. However, I perfectly picture myself drinking some poison like the Croatian dude did in The Hague recently a few years down the road.

Why?

I have been thinking long and hard about this (too hard even). In my opinion it boils down to pride. I can see that I might not get the life I want. And I know I am not made to be a regular AFC. Aut Caesar aut nihil, as the Romans would say.

As usual @Blaximus is quite on point when he advises against “basing your worth on outside forces”. In my case that was politics and history, and a belief in glory and heroism. Dying fighting for your country seemed like the ultimate honor for me.

Now that allure is (sort of) gone, but the self-centered path has not really kicked in.

The typical RP life of working on yourself, starting a business, hustling here and there… does not attract me. My father is an expert at this, ever the dynamic type, but I doubt I can pull if off. I am bored by finance and investments, and everyday struggles and challenges.

So it is quite a hard place to be. What I do now, is that under no circumstance I want to be the dreaded AFC. So suicide is always there.

“That said, we need to avoid selling a male version of “Eat, Pray, Love” (not that Rollo is doing that, but some do) where we just join the “everyone for themselves” chorus of societal decay”

I disagree entirely with your whole brain.

EPL is actually a male space anyway. Maybe substitute ‘pray’ with something like ‘red pill’ or ‘regaining your mental point of origin’ or just ‘pray’ if you want. Men are made to roam and seek physicality and sensuality. That’s our space and women are trying to invade it. What’s new? They see 58 year old men overseas who are as happy as sandboys with 19 year old Brazilians on their laps. So of course, being unhappy, they want to stake out that territory as well. Too bad it doesn’t work for them at all because their post wall bodies can only attract males who are far below them in status, six pack due to being half-starved notwithstanding.

Also,

And are you shaming men for being ‘for themselves’? That’s exactly what they should start doing. Men (particularly white men) were so self-sacrificial that ‘being a man’ in our society means walking straight into the yoke. That started the whole disintegration. The societal decay is due to white males being so incredibly subservient and willingly overburdened cthat the demographics leaching off of that overproduction have grown like bacteria. A few generations of men need to say ‘fuck it’ and bridges will start falling, city septic lines will start failing, gangs will keep people indoors until women will be clamoring for men again. A strong man will come and it will all get sorted. Their won’t be freedom again though. Shame.

-Divorce rape and having to work weekends, and work an extra 15 years just to pay off your worst enemy who kidnapped your children and mugged you of 700k. How many men would rather die than keep slaving away for that? Of course, it is written off as the man being so heartbroken after losing his 200 pounder that he had to die, out of male weakness etc. But it might be much closer to “Fuck it”. Some suicides have to be attributed to spite over divorce rape. I saw a manosphere comment a long time ago about how these days you’ll see a lot of middle-aged and late middle-aged men working weekend shifts at Costco, Best Buy etc. Not upper management either. These guys are running shopping carts from the parking lot etc. They don’t look happy. After that comment, I’ve noticed it myself. The explanation is that they have to try to sneak in a side job go get any kind of discretionary income going. Until the ex finds out they have another source of income and sues for that too. How many guys just don’t want to give their monstrous ex that kind of satisfaction anymore?

-Obesity and the utter sexual worthlessness of 97% of middle-aged women. Blue pillers aren’t out running game with co-eds so save the “But I date twenty somethings” redirect. It’s not about that. A guy up above made a comment about men being “slaves to the pussy” but who has a pussy these days? The 25 and unders, with only surprising exceptions here and there. Pussy power and all it entails has gone the way of the keg stand. It’s for kids. I don’t think a 58 year old man with his 57 year old manatee is a ‘slave to the pussy’ at all. He’s a slave to his concept of making his family a success and a slave to the Sword of Divorceacles over his head.

-Lack of escorts, professional services in America. So not only does a guy have to work 70 hour weeks for his ex and taxation, but he gets absolutely zero pleasure in return. Beers and fapping are not true pleasures at all. So no outlet, just work to keep the ex with her 5k monthly discretionary. P4P is not only illegal but it is slathered with grime and Puritanical guilt, shame, filth, danger, grittiness, neon, and all kinds of dark evil. Plus it is offered by meth-heads and assorted gutter trash only. Other cultures offer services in a much more mainstream, shameless, fun way, provided by healthy, beautiful young women who want to wear designer labels. I’ve lived overseas and having a stable of 3-4 young beauties in a respectful, fun, legal, willing and friendly rotation is very much something to live for.

the love of the woman that you miss, it’s the feeling of taking care of someone.

“Perhaps this feeling occurs because you’ve been programmed to want to do this?”

Nice one gamer. Good observation.

Go ahead and pursue that ‘feeling of taking care’ of that woman up to but not quite including the divorce hearing in which she will try to jail you with phony allegations of violence and pedophilia. Only the very late realization that your income stream ends in jail will have her call off that testimony. The open and obvious perjury at that point will be disregarded. As will the judge’s previous determination that you’re an abusive pedophile once the ex decides she wants to EPL every June. You get custody in June. The courts decided you’re not a pedohile in June, just the other 11 months. Anyway, keep ‘taking care’ of these innocent, delicate flowers dude. Good idea.

Successful DJ paid to play sets all over the country at all the top clubs flys to Ibiza for a summer residency in pasha, massive social proof fun jet setting lifestyle.
Just one example of success with women being a consequence of lifestyle.

Please explain to me why you think my assertion isn’t true?

Do you think the DJ in the example above has to “work hard” to be successful with women?
To what would you attribute his success if not lifestyle?

My story is not as dramatic because I happen to have detected the downward trend of my relationship and my responsibility for it and my mindset earlier- before the brink so to speak, but this in now way takes away from the fact that I also was enabled to turn my life around and back on an upward trajectory by RP, especially this community and RT’s writings. Absolutely amazing stuff here!!

Successful DJ paid to play sets all over the country at all the top clubs flys to Ibiza for a summer residency in pasha, massive social proof fun jet setting lifestyle.
Just one example of success with women being a consequence of lifestyle.”

….You don’t think “successful dj’s” can’t be boring/beta.( I mean who are you when your not running your set)

You don’t think there’s “Alpha” guys who work boring 9-5’s and are the most interesting thing to girls in the world

You don’t think there’s loaded millionaires with successful exciting” lifestyle” wondering why they have blue balls after having so many chicks on their yacht.

You don’t think theirs homeless “Alphas” who don’t do shit but still get laid by chicks.(such a amazing lifestyle)

Lately I’ve seen most guys that are really considered alpha by females are just basic dudes who know how to sit down with a girl talk make her feel 30 different emotions and escalate to sex. …

“The very basis of Frame is having her step into your reality and not you into hers. How are you going to get her to do that if you don’t have a lifestyle that she wants to be a part of?”

Idk…… maybe we have different life experiences….. but I know guys (liike myself lol0) that can talk to a girl and make a whole new world out of nothing(words/emotion)….cause everything really is nothing lol.

That shit is frame

Shit my car is like neverland lol.

I actually still have to write up this field report…. cause the girl im with right now was really honest and told me she doesn’t even like me she just likes how I make her feel lol…. She asked me if I was offended and I was like no I appreciate the honesty.

but yeah your wrong -_- and theirs tons of amazing guys with great lifestyles who don’t have the social skills to get laid. theres a reason sites like this and places like rsd exist

I don’t usually leave comments but this one hits pretty close to home.

A few years ago I lost my job (economic reasons) and after taking stock of my life (I had a lot of other underlying issues that were unaddressed, a multitude of failures, along with some really bad experiences with women) I came to the conclusion that suicide was my best option. What’s interesting is that I came to that conclusion based on the deductive process you described. After going through the emotional cycle of realizing/thinking that my life was basically in ruins, the deductive process of what to do next was eerily calm and rational (at least it was in my own mind). That event led me to the manosphere and your blog.

I must be an anomaly because I don’t know anyone (that I ever knew) that committed suicide. And I never once had a suicidal thought ever, so don’t take anything I would say on the subject as disagreeable or think that I live in the land of unicorns (but wait, ’cause I must, actually).

I have a question Rollo. Do you see any generalities in the high profile male rock stars that have committed suicide–and in relation to Red Pill concepts?

Esp. Chris Cornell and Chester Bennington, as well as the myriad over the last 40 years? Or any insights in to those two guys? Or are all suicidal male rockstars suicidal in their own way?

It was more of a confession on my exes part. She opened up to me about things she wasn’t proud of in her past life. She had tears in her eyes when she told me. That only drove my desire to save her.

She didn’t grow up with a father so the things she did in her past was from a lack of a strong man in her life to keep her stable. She didn’t do anything horrible when she was with me. I knew she felt safe with me and I felt like it was my purpose to help her.

What’s hard for me to accept is if I did the right thing breaking up with her. I basically broke up with her because of her past. Would her past life carried over into our marriage? Or would my positive influence have been enough to keep her grounded? I’m not sure I’ll ever know

“The thing is, I have suicidal thoughts but I am not suicidal as in wanting to kill myself right now. I am quite horrified at having to leap off a bridge or stuff like that to be honest. However, I perfectly picture myself drinking some poison like the Croatian dude did in The Hague recently a few years down the road.

Why?

I have been thinking long and hard about this (too hard even). In my opinion it boils down to pride. I can see that I might not get the life I want.”</blockquote

That's not concrete suicidal ideations. That's just normal abstract masculine thoughts built in to your firmware: The desire for release from constraint. Men's fundamental drive is the dynamic behind men's fascination with football, sports, war movies, philosophy (and history), sex, beer, cars, and other "typical guy" pursuits: they all provide experiences, in one form or another, of "freedom."

Men (or those who are "masculine"), by nature, fundamentally thirst for freedom, which men pursue through their "mission," a more in-depth term for "job."

Mersonia said: "Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live"

Proto-Red Pill Deida would say: "We must see that we are afraid of the thing we most desire, and so we live a mediocre life, never bringing to consummation the primary impulse of our heart."

“‘I want out of here!’ This is the essential Masculine plea.

When the Masculine is in a bad mood, He wants out.

He feels constrained, weary, trapped and burdened
by life, responsibilities and relationships.

He seeks freedom from all this ‘stuff’ of life. He wants out.”

“For a man with a strong Masculine sexual essence, life is not simply a given fact. Rather, it is a problem to be solved or an art to be mastered. It is a struggle. Therefore, when such a person feels burned out, tired and weary, His first desire is for release. He wants to get out of this “place” that requires so much work. He wants to be released from the burdens of life and relationship, for example, through beer, TV, philosophy or meditation. (ed.: or suicidal thoughts, the extreme example)

“In an intimate relationship, this tendency to want ‘out’ can be misunderstood. For instance, a woman with a more Feminine sexual essence is tending to either doubt love or enjoy love. So when her partner wants out, she immediately assumes that he doesn’t love her, and that is why he wants out. But very often, he does love her. He is just feeling trapped by the constraints of life, and so he is reacting to the feeling of being burdened by wanting out. He wants to feel release – not necessarily an end to his intimate relationship.”

In addition, men (or the “Masculine”) like pushing “the edge.” Men thrive on competition and come alive when challenged, when pushing through limits, when conditions demand their absolute best. They find a type of purity in this.

“Most men have not grounded themselves in the freedom of Being. If they had, the howling winds of the Feminine might swirl around them, but they would simply stand strong, already full, unafraid of loss or gain, and therefore free of the Feminine’s push and pull . . . When a man is rested in his true Being, he may be deeply involved in an intimate relationship, but it is not essential to his happiness.”

“There is only one way for a man to give a woman what she truly wants, and that is through his strength of loving when he is not compromised by fear.”

Keep in mind, I say that this stuff is proto-Red Pill. I know their are doubters that say there are no good women out their and inter-sexual relationships are socially declining across the board. It doesn’t take away from a man’s burden of performance during how things are, not how they ought to be.

Rollo explains this dynamic in the face of Open Hypergamy in his well explained description of being the best man you can for yourself in his interview with Donovan Sharp. Fantastic interview Rollo.

“Esp. Chris Cornell and Chester Bennington, as well as the myriad over the last 40 years? Or any insights in to those two guys? Or are all suicidal male rockstars suicidal in their own way?”

Theres a popular theory that they were killed …and the scene was just altered to look like a suicide….something to do with exposing a pedophile ring or something . Not really worth looking up though . No one remembers these things like vegas lol

-We wish things were like they used to be. You see people doing it all wrong and yet you refuse to conform to the beta mainstream shit.

“Only the most creative, resourceful and motivated of men can really utilize, much less master, all that this information has to offer him.”

-Check

“And even a portion of those men can really see past the antipathy of their supposed obsolescence to do something truly meaningful or masterful.”

-I’m 110% sure this is KEY. My project I’m working on all of my so called or what I like to think of are obstacles are females holding me back because of my expectations of them but low-key getting let down and I’m like fuck that bitch but it’s always been me.

You’re right I really don’t want to see past my antipathy of my obsolescence because you got to suck so much dick(metiforcaly) seeing all this shit through a Red Pill lens really sticks the FUCK OUT, it also doesn’t help that we cling to how things should be.

Also allot of these guys are getting oneitis and getting emotionally raped by women. To be real that was one of the reasons I got into PUA/RP from a breakup in HS so I could throw that shit back in their face but that was my “Antipathy of my obsolescence” back then and it’s always been KEEP DOING YOU KNOW MATTER WHAT.

Of course the DJ could be a boring beta when he’s not playing his sets. But lifestyle is like looks, all other things being equal it’s an obvious advantage to have an exciting lifestyle that women want to be part of.

Alpha guys working boring 9-5 jobs, not saying they don’t exist just can’t think of any that I’ve met. Nope not one!
Low level jobs like door security and some construction jobs yes but boring 9-5 office jobs no never met one.

Homeless Alphas banging chicks, yea sure but what about the quality? Do you think these relationships last more than a few bangs?

So your car is wonderland or whatever where you create an emotional landscape so you can seduce a thot for the night!
Talk about clown game! How long do you think you can maintain the emotional rollercoaster?

My lifestyle is sub optimal but I’m working on it and will arrive where I want to be.
However my n count is still north of 150 so yes game works but lifestyle is a multiplier.

If my lifestyle was optimal the quality of the women who come into my life would increase dramatically, I have the basics down and now I just need to put the cherry on top to regularly get the top tier women I really want.

But yes they will be a consequence of my improved lifestyle not the driving force behind my mission.

Commiting suicide over a chick is not even beta it’s omega. You literally have to really hate yourself so much plus the social conditioning is such a toxic combo. In that sense it dose not seem like the guys fault because he was taught to be this way. HOLY SHIT THIS WORLD IS FUCKED.

Oscar C and others who get these thoughts: try smoking a cigarette or vape when the bad thoughts come back to you. The idea is, you don’t want to die, you just want a little taste. A cigarette or vape session will do it. Hope this helps.

“Of course the DJ could be a boring beta when he’s not playing his sets. But lifestyle is like looks, all other things being equal it’s an obvious advantage to have an exciting lifestyle that women want to be part of.”

Then he wouldn’t have success with women as a consequence of lifestyle . Don’t get me wrong son I do agree that it helps but it’s not a deciding factor.

Looks help initially but when she finds out you’re a retard(This isn’t a jab at you personally) they won’t matter.

“Success with women comes as a consequence of lifestyle, they’re not what drive your lifestyle.

No effort required.”

So lets go back to what you originally said………..^^^ You said this stupid shit. Which is really stupid. So I said you should know better by now atleast lol. So yeah my point stands bby.

“Homeless Alphas banging chicks, yea sure but what about the quality? Do you think these relationships last more than a few bangs?”

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Whether success to someone is banging a 10 one time or a 8 for the rest of their life that’s up to them son.

“So your car is wonderland or whatever where you create an emotional landscape so you can seduce a thot for the night!”

If this isn’t the essence of game in general I don’t know what is. (fall in love rather /seduce or either ) At least it’s the baseline in beginning a relationship if you are .

“Talk about clown game! How long do you think you can maintain the emotional rollercoaster?”

That’s actually a really good question. How long can anyone really keep it up. How long can game which girls will grow accustomed too stand and if you are in a marriage is it upheld by desire or just the fact that the female has invested(lol idk if thats good word (I think become accustomed to being part of your life is better) so much in it that she just decides its better to stay.

I’d really like someone with game and that is married to awnser that… queue ( blax sentybear.. shit even SJF (Not you ASD don’t respond plz)(And i’m not trolling at all I’d like a deadpan serious answer)

“My lifestyle is sub optimal but I’m working on it and will arrive where I want to be.
However my n count is still north of 150 so yes game works but lifestyle is a multiplier.”

idc. good for u tho

“If my lifestyle was optimal the quality of the women who come into my life would increase dramatically, I have the basics down and now I just need to put the cherry on top to regularly get the top tier women I really want.”

Well your just continually telling me no one likes you for you but I mean to each his own . Do your thing lil daddy.

Alpha guys working boring 9-5 jobs, not saying they don’t exist just can’t think of any that I’ve met. Nope not one!”

I’m just going to assume you think an alpha is a retarded gorilla man who just goes up to women looks good and is rich wearing nice clothes saying I want to fuck you woman and the girl just swoons and falls onto his cock. lol

Your number one objective is to protect yourself from having your mind snatched by the promise of some kind of reward or measure of self worth by devotion to some kind of societal, man made concept designed to gain control of your thoughts and manipulate your beliefs.</i?

Great stuff here.

I suppose I recently got "zeroed out" in the sense that I had thought I had built up much relational equity that I could draw on when necessary but my ex-wife clearly saw things differently. I do want to present a counterpoint though to something that is "conventional wisdom" in RP and that is that women with higher Ns or more relationships are always inherently more risky. And I think the other extreme can be risky as well. I was my ex-wife's first and only serious boyfriend which I think made ending things easier in that she has no other historical experience/frame of reference to draw on. I think she (mistakenly) believes that I am replaceable with another guy of similar SMV/MMV and only time will show her the folly of that assumption.

On a different note, I'm still trying to map out the best hunting grounds/fishing spot for meeting attractive women now that I am 43 and not 32 or 25 when I could still easily hit up the dance clubs with the twentysomethings. In the meantime, I continue to play the swiping game on Bumble and POF to give myself something to occupy my time while taking a dump. My experience confirms what multiple guys have told me which is online pretty much sucks. I've got a friend of mine, early 30s, tall, extremely good looking, this guy is a pussy slayer with a N count over 100. He is also an alcoholic and coke addict who has been sober for quite awhile which I am proud of him for as he has his career back on track. But he has been avoiding bars obviously to maintain his sobriety, and using online to try and meet women. Nothing, and this is a fucking really good looking guy, with an advanced degree, and an attractive career. So to be honest, I don't really don't know who the fuck the girls on these apps who are 6-8s are actually swiping right on, messaging, and meeting up with.

“Oscar C and others who get these thoughts: try smoking a cigarette or vape when the bad thoughts come back to you. The idea is, you don’t want to die, you just want a little taste. A cigarette or vape session will do it. Hope this helps.”

She is a great mom and partner, but i can tell that theres been a loss of status for me. I maintain my frame but ive come to believe that any man who proposes to a woman, marries her and works to maintain his family, is headed for the zeroing out. Being a husband is not an alpha move, no matter how hard you try.

BAM! Drop the fuckin mic. Sadly, I’ve concluded you are 100% spot on. And I’ll repeat something I mentioned previously. Even if you operate from the “right frame” there are still many, many headwinds a marriage in this current day and age faces that didn’t exist long ago. In previous times and cultures, families and societies encouraged married partners to stay together. Presently, women have multiple influences all telling them to blow up their marriage because what is on the “other side” is better than their “crappy” husband.

@ Vlad
I understand and can relate to quite an extent.
Given that you obviously had both rational doubts and negative physical ‘gut’ response ( – the turn off you mention. Here I may be too cynical, but somehow it feels that what she confessed was the proverbial top part of the iceberg, that she thought you could still handle..), plus the ‘saving’ dynamic present in the relationship from your part (she could sense it and would adjust herself accordingly), it was probably good decision, especially when you were seriously considering marriage. But that of course won’t make the doubts and the pain disappear right away, it will take a while, or longer while, or maybe it can even turn out to be that sort of shit that each of us has some of inside and carries it with them for the rest of their lives, re-appearing now and then.., hope not, but this is quite common part of human condition..

best advice for suicidal thoughts is to go out and exercise, particularly running several miles. Or go hang out with people.

middle aged men tend to have higher suicide rates because they have a more limited social circle. Being cut off from others is a major contributor to suicide…its leaves you stuck in your own thoughts, with no one to help you or encourage you.

Things like smoking, drinking, those are all very dangerous. You can develop a dependence very quickly if you aren’t careful. Its better that you go out and create actual positive feelings rather than rely on artificial chemicals (same reason anti-depressants are so bad). The only time I think those can help if you have a mysterious illness like I do, that never gets better and you just have to sit around and wait till it can diagnosed (almost one week until see specialist doctor, can’t come soon enough) then yeah drinking can help you get through the waiting…but there is still a serious risk of addiction as a result. I was getting a little too reliant on booze so I stopped drinking entirely a couple months ago. So even in those situations where you are just stuck, I still can’t recommend drugs at all. Very dangerous.

You need to go do something, if you are at all able, and as I said running and going out socializing are the best I personally can think of. None are going to make a incredible improvement, but they will make an improvement and they will put you out in places around people where you will have the chance to improve your situation.

There’s no quick and easy solution to it…its a lot of hard work and enduring feeling miserable for months or years before you can even get to feeling just “normal” like most people do. But its that or kill your self, choice is up to you.

Very poignant. I went through something similar at the age of 30 (I’m 43 now) except the order was reversed. I was fired first and then actually a few days after that my wife said she wanted to end the marriage (that was my first marriage). This was 2004 so it predates the Red Pill/sphere as we know it now, but I stumbled on Rollo’s writings on SoSuave, and they opened the door to me that another way/belief structure was possible. I started bouncing part-time, developed some camaderie with a group of guys, and got back into lifting very hard. All that helped get me in a much better place mentally, and TBH I felt suicidal early right after all that stuff hit me. Ironically, I met my second wife about 2.5 years after all that, and she blew up our marriage this past April. I never had a single suicidal thought. It is hard to explain but I wasn’t even depressed per se, but just profoundly disappointed. Although I am aware of the “soulmate myth” I did believe she was “different” in some ways that I had a “Ride or Die” type partner for life. But when the rubber hits the road, a woman’s first loyalty is to her FEELINGS and emotional state, not to past promises made, and they can use their emotions to contort events and facts. My 2nd ex-wife actually wrote in the e-mail informing me of the divorce that she “took her vows very seriously”. I had to laugh at the absurdity of that line in an e-mail informing me she was filing for divorce.

It’s usually best to really consider things carefully when you find yourself at a crossroads in life. It may be best to voluntarily zero out the course you are on and rebuild, rather than continuing on that course until it forces you off unvoluntarily, or until it wears you down into a shell of your former self.</i?

Excellent point Nova. There is a business parallel, and that is the idea of "sunk costs" and that you should not factor them into your decision making. If you have a business that is generating losses/cash flow negative with no hope of turning it around, the fact that you invested 250K already is irrelevant. You have to forget about the 250K.

I read a quote once and I'm paraphrasing here not perfectly (it was more eloquent I'm sure) but basically saying "If you walking down the wrong road, STOP, TURN AROUND, and go back". I think we humans are wired to consider our past efforts and investments when deciding our future and really we need to forget it.

I have to agree here even though the married alphas on TRM will bite back hard on this. The ramifications of VAWA, divorce and our blatantly sexist family courts are well known by women too and that betaizes the husband automatically. I’m not saying there aren’t guys out there who can overcome it with ‘frame’ etc. I’m just saying that of all the myriad definitions of alpha, one word has to be agreed upon; power. An alpha projects power in whatever way. A husband in our culture is immediately legally subordinated and that certainly doesn’t project power. The woman can clobber the man’s life with divorce from a legal standpoint enforced by gov’t violence and everyone knows this. Meanwhile, a man ‘threatening’ a woman with divorce is comedic to the point of making for a good SNL skit. “Go ahead dude (cackles)” It would be hard for a woman to not downgrade her husband’s power ranking in this current environment. The husband is behind bars with a phone call. It takes a whole lot of alpha to override that degree of legal powerlessness. The whole thing kicks off with the man kneeling in order to propose. Mistake.

Example: I’m over 60 and look it, but not many wrinkles unless I grin big (but hey, who doesn’t show wrinkles when they grin big), overweight, bald. I wear a cap normally and sunglasses when the sun is shining. I was walking thru a Wally World parking lot and I noticed a 30ish hottie checking me out (staring). It’s my walk and posture. They convey entitlement. Women have to look at me to see my signals. So looks, entitlement. Women say that I have a cute grin and dancing eyes. It’s all hamsterization because women are supposed to be attracted by looks just like men are because men and women are equal according to FI programming.

Good post. I am 33 and have never seriously considered suicide but have recently thought about it casually after a break-up with a GF of 4.5 years who I thought I would marry and have a happy life with. As such I am back to square one and anxious of the future. Other posters are correct that it isn’t so much losing “the one”, it is more losing all those connections and memories of that person. I lost a lot of people (her sister and her husband, her parents, her cousins) who I genuinely cared about. After everything happened I devoted more time to bettering myself in the gym and have taken a certificate course that could help advance my career. I feel good about these things and my ultimate goal is to write a fiction novel, but I still just feel lost and feel like I will never be good enough. A point of contention towards the end of the relationship was that I wasn’t as advanced in my career and making enough money (for her) and she had an excellent job and was making more than I was. There are plenty of people in worse situations than me. I am fortunate and do realize I have a lot going for me, but the past few months have just made me feel hopeless at times. I do not want a marriage that ends in a divorce. I do not know what would make me happy at this point but know it is up to me to find it. I need to stop comparing myself to others and just try to make myself happy. This is proving much harder than expected.

“Talk about clown game! How long do you think you can maintain the emotional rollercoaster?”

30+ years so far…”clown game” lol…it’s the price of being with a woman in a LTR. You’ll be doing lots of “clown game” to spin plates, too. I’m always amusing myself…if people see that as being a clown, they are socially retarded…clowns seek to amuse other people

Thanks for your advice, I had heard something about nicotine boosting cognition. I already smoked a bit during this summer in order to open chicks, but did not like it. Terrible breath when waking up the next day.

Also, my suicidal thoughts are more like mid/long term planning. I live with my parents, I am a single kid, and I know it would devastate them, so it is out of the question right now. But if they were not there, and I had financial problems, I know I would seriously consider it. All done in a very rational manner, as others have commented. But thanks for your suggestion anyways. This community is really helpful.

@hank

Yes, exercise helps. I have always moved, even when I jogged only (which I now know is not good for your muscles). So exercise does improve mood but it is highly temporary. I recall being much more sedentary in past and happier.

@SJF

Great insights as usual. I was a bit intimidated by mersonia’s Hitler quote but I get better what he meant now. I think that I have to fully switch gears into a more conventional path, one much more under my control.

If domination by the narcissist elicits identification, perhaps via empathy or being-ethical, the narcissist uses their self-righteousness for short-term matings and low parental investment. They get away with being arrogant, nonresponsive, and manipulative. The key is to address narcissists without identifying with them and without falling into their structuring attitude.
The mythical notion of Narcissism is that the person is enthralled by their own self-image or self-perception. Narcissism in psychiatric terms is about people who feel self-righteous, the bully as well as the dope fiend, the shamers and the haters. Narcissism is also about people who are nonresponsive – they judge other’s statements as unworthy of requiring a response and if they do offer a response it is usually without any reason or justification.

You could say the narcissist lives in their own world, that is, that the universe revolves around them, like the ego-centered adolescent. I notice some people who seem to think that when they enter a room, everyone is supposed to address them and pay attention to them – that topic raising and commenting are not their responsibility.

But, the diagnosis of narcissism involves observing manipulation and exploitative domination. These traits or qualities are more common today, you may encounter people like this all the time!!

A good example of this nonsense is the person who expects others to use “We” and not “I” in their remarks. Thus, discounting any “I” statements, these persons believe that everyone either thinks like they do, or they are dismissed! The notion that their own opinions are personal and not generally shared has escaped them.

Las Vegas is the leading suicide city in the US but 90% of the suicides are by residents, not tourists. The double whammy of job loss and underwater house ownership is doing them in at a high rate!

Is marriage really or necessarily the sign of adulthood?

Suicide is not a personal decision in my view, it is a social form of exploitation. Camus says that suicide is the most important question. It is an important question but not the most important. Suicide is the outcome of social domination and exploitation. Others desire someone’s suicide or death or accident. It is their wish – it is an instinct. Opposing suicide is the same as opposing the death wish of others towards one’s self. Survival is more important than suicide. The question is why.

Camus’ premise is that meaninglessness means indifference to life and is the same as absurdity. Absurdity however does not mean meaninglessness, it means that you do not know the meaning and must seek it. The absurdists were often philosophers or intellectuals seeking the meaning of life because they did not know it, e.g. Socrates. It does not take much seeking to realize the meanings of life. Every problem requires its own investigation and there are many problems. The meaning of life is simply to appreciate it and to find ways to grow more intellectually knowledgeable.

Suicide however is related to our social contexts. Suicide is a social problem, almost twice the murder rate and for some populations or subgroupings very high rates. Today, suicide is related to depression, a mood disorder and a neurological disorder, and depression is related to guilt. Guilt feelings are internal aggressions against our own self. Guilt is related to blame, accusation, ridicule, etc. There are many subtle examples from smoking, to drug use, to alcoholism, to risk taking, to accidents, especially car accidents (the many victims of car accidents are not committing suicide, but there is the tendency by one or the other(s) driver who failed to maintain their vigilance for some odd reason). Accidents are a good example of the unconscious nature of self-condemnation – you should be aware of the risk you are taking and take precautions. There is therefore no such thing as an accident, you are responsible.

Camus however was not familiar with Durkheim’s sociological analysis of suicide which is more definitive. Neither Camus nor Durkheim fully explained suicide, but Durkheim’s analysis of the contexts of egoism, fatalism, and anomy are telling. He posited in chapter 6 of his Seminal text, Suicide, 1894, that suicide was related to divorce and divorce was related to jurisdictional laws.

In jurisdictions where divorce was relatively easy to get, men committed more suicides than women, and vice verse in jurisdictions where divorce was nearly impossible. Durkheim posited 4 causes of suicide: anomie, egoism, altruism, and fatalism. Camus takes up only fatalism as the main cause but Durkheim felt that this was rare. Instead, egoism was considered the main cause: a person feels their life is unworthy because they acted in a dishonorable way.
Altruistic suicide is also quite common: community workers, namely, military, police and firemen, risk their lives to protect the people and to maintain order (this motive can be criticized in terms of effectiveness but all societies have this function of enforcement) and in this endeavor are sometimes killed – their risk-taking is a form of altruistic suicide.
Anomie is far worse – the lack of rules and laws to oppose to the forces of exploitation and domination, hate, etc. We do not include car accident deaths nor poisoning deaths in our suicide statistics, if we did, the rate would be quite high. We also do not include those forms of contamination that we consciously indulge: cigarette smoking and drug use which are very high causes of death. Therefore, our human societies lack forms of education that oppose exploitative tendencies that people exercise in their disciplinary attitudes towards others. In other words, the real causes or norms of action that are practiced in our societies, and historically, are deadly and evil forms of coercion and domination which our laws and customs, our political principles, attempt to withstand.

As Clausewitz famously said, politics is just war by other means, we can say, suicide is just murder by other means.

All meaning comes from consensus. This is how suicide is a social problem: If society can not ascribe meaning to your life then you are absurd and must commit suicide. Guilt is a social phenomena also.

Camus asks “When is life not worth living?” and his answer is ‘NEVER.’ No matter how absurd you have become. Finding meaning may be a fun exercise but so is getting drunk. Just don’t get all caught up in it.

But, this shows that Camus is not familiar with argument about the actual causes of suicide. Meaninglessness has to be defined and I do not think that consensus is the basis of meaning nor do I think that consensus is very often achieved. In fact, one of the major problems in our lives is achieving consensus with others, particularly with those who have more status or less status. Disagreement is more of a zeitgeist than is consensus. Consider how necessary people think being critical is and how fearful they are of appearing naïve, which can hardly be disguised! Anyway, meaning pertains more to making practical judgments about cost-benefit or risk where the consequences determine what is meaningful and everyone can think whatever they want about it, meaning does not change because of what people think. There must be a relation between meaning and the truth, otherwise, everyone is a liar.

And this can lead to a dissertation on narcissism and suicide where power, money and the belief that one is RIGHT determine all behavior, meaning, and criminality/immorality.

Suicide however is the results of factors like stress, depression, lack of sleep, drug abuse/alcoholism where the suicidal event is spontaneous or impulsive, that is, unconscious. The person cannot control their suicidal thoughts or impulses, the planning is an unconscious fantasy and I think it is related to one’s position in the culture.

Consider some groups at very high risk of suicide: police officers, soldiers, LGBTQ’ers, adolescents, the elderly, and more recently middle-aged white men! What do they all have in common? They all have in common their shit status – they are ridiculed by others in the society as chumps, they are micro-managed, they are harassed and ridiculed. They are treated very negatively! People wish they were dead, there is a death wish upon them, they are hated. If they do not understand this, their problems, or belong to support groups, then the unconscious fantasies, which I think are social inputs, lead to impulsive suicidal actions.

How can you deny that the very high rate of suicide by soldiers/veterans is not related to Islamic hatred and to contradictions between soldiers’ beliefs about our political reality and the more common everyday assumptions of people?

Our society is woefully under several misconceptions from religious metaphysics which are not scientific truth at all, to exposure to contaminants: drugs, alcohol, pesticides, antibiotics in food, steroids, etc etc. How much of a step is it from the fact of over 300M guns sold to US citizens to impulsive suicide with those guns, or murder, or murder-suicide, or worse. Not to mention the multiplicity of the wounded from failed suicide attempts and attempted murder!!
Human always seek context before anything else. They want to be in agreement with their social surroundings. The most absurd among us are the most likely to commit suicide.
Suicide is often done to attract attention which is context seeking behavior. It is extremely selfish behavior. It is as if at risk groups were expected to attempt suicide – as if they have no other choice given their context.

There is no necessary relation between guns and suicide, there are many other, and simpler ways. Try to notice how we have defined suicide – we do not include accidents or poisoning, drug overdose, lung cancer, obesity or alcoholic liver disease are not called suicide! So our definitions are very temporal and event-ful! In this sense, suicide is a language game, only certain definitions of the context count. The context is therefore a stage where stage-setting is the predominant activity. Now as far as games go, this is fine, but we are NOT playing a game, and the rules of games are irrelevant to our real life activities. And, Wittgenstein says this!!!
I object that if you don’t fit into a context you are destined to be a suicide victim – nonsense. People do not have a right to discriminate and abuse others, just as with assault and attempts to murder; these are immoral, often illegal even if not prosecuted, and ‘not fitting’ is not the usual cause of suicide. The element of social context should not be subtracted from your understanding! People believe and think they are entitled to judge others – harshly – they are not.

Context is perhaps sought but in the situational or locational sense – certain places are contexts for certain activities, but some activities can be contextualized anywhere. Disrespect for example can be found in any context and is a recontextualization of a given context, or perhaps a decontextualization where anything goes. The mass murderers and terrorists clearly decontextualize and then attempt to recontextualize but no one can figure that nonsense out!
Wittgenstein is not the only person to pronounce on meaning. Of course context is important but the DEFINITION OF THE CONTEXT, the DEFINITION OF THE SITUATION, the DEFINITION OF THE POLITICAL MOVEMENT is contested.

At a Starbucks the other day, the barista was holding onto a coffee enema and could not resist pronouncing the word, ‘tornado’ when I walked out in to a summer rainstorm. I had recognized that he was a ‘customer discriminator’ who discriminates against his customers. Quite common – customers get to sit around and drink their coffee and he has to stand up and work, full of hated and resentment! But, his meanings are not determinative of the context – saying ‘tornado’ does not produce a tornado. And this is precisely what occurs with many meaning-instances – there is no connection between the context and the utterance. The first thing the anthropologist has to ask himself is why did my informer say THAT? More typically, people try to insult each other, exclude each other, e.g. get out of here, or are inappropriately indifferent.

So, meaning must be connected to scientific truth, or to legal truth, and not to any old commonsense or common consensus which are usually BS. But, these utterances and attitudes are real existing factors and must be coped with, but they are not meaningful in the sense of necessary consequences and only those statements which pertain to necessity have the quality of meaning.

It is like this in logic: an argument may have the correct form but be false, and it may have an incorrect form – the conclusion does not follow from the premises, and still not be true. Therefore, meaningfulness is not simply what others signify to be true, the statement must in fact represent a necessary and true state of affairs, otherwise, it is MEANINGLESS.
Do you think medical doctors, engineers, or lawyers decide what is meaningful because of consensus or because of what is in fact the case?

The barista’s utterance is obviously not related to the actual weather – there was in fact no tornado, just a summer rainstorm. Oh, I said “”Storm”” which is a neo-Nazi euphemism!! What is the barista talking about? Does he even KNOW? I doubt it. He is making emotional sounds, not really sharing any information about what is the case either in the external world nor in his own internal mind. How can I know what he is referring to? The expression does not shed any light on the contents of his mind, his inner thoughts, so mere expression does not necessarily give us any insight. Because of the incoherence, the mere emotion, there is no sharing of meaning. At best, there is the effect of his utterance which makes its listeners wonder wtf? In this sense, the remark is an act of ideology, of concealment.
The legal or formal definition of suicide is narrow. This narrow definition does not address either the psychological cause, the state of mind, nor the social causes. I am interested in the social causes, the context, of suicide, of the psychological state of mind of the victims. The question of ‘state of mind’ is the key factor in any trial or adjudication of guilt – material evidence, opportunity, motive notwithstanding. We do not know what the victims of the JimJones event knew: if they were complicit in a mass suicide or duped in a mass execution.

Wittgenstein starts with the Tractatus which posits a relation between language and reality where the issue is the accuracy – the logic – of linguistic statements that represent reality. By the time of Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein has ‘gestalt-switched’ his viewpoint and now understands the person “””in””” language, hence language games and ‘context and rules.’ The individual’s utterances are intelligible but not necessarily True or False in relation to a scientific realism, but rather in relation to the language game that he is playing. Now the issue is KNOWLEDGE, not simply metaphysics.

Typically, we understand these issues of representation, of language games, of contexts and rules, but these notions put us in a linguistic context or communicative context, not in a scientific realism. In order to do science, to investigate, the individual must suspend these games and representations (pictures of the world), must distance their self from the contents of their minds and from the perceptions of their senses.

The philosophical argument becomes a matter of transcendence, of distancing, of interpretation, of hermeneutics and no longer of mere participation in a cultural setting/context/game. Now, I do not think that a complete extrication from language, language games or thinking games, is possible – everyone is still connected to their language and therefore to everyone else. But, the question of Truth or Falsity requires several levels of analysis including the counterfactual ‘What if.” Dialectics is a matter of recognizing the contradictions, not embracing this or that side of the problematic.

Are humans merely reacting to environmental stimuli? If a barista commits suicide then you might feel guilty by not recognizing his cries for help. A new program at Starbuck may be instituted, in his honor, to prevent any future, needless deaths or a new kamikaze frappuccino may have been named for him with all proceeds going to barista toughening classes where they would learn to express their suicidal thoughts more clearly.

How is consensus different from dependency, or majority rules? Consensus is like legitimacy – how is the illegitimate concealed? People do all sorts things because they believe that they are in the right, in the establishment, a part of the general consensus. But, my real dispute with consensus is that it is so rarely achieved. What does ‘reaching consensus’ mean to you?
Freud’s notion of the self deserves attention – his id-ego-superego model where the ego provides the functioning of defense mechanisms, as pathological responses, in a conflict-ridden social reality; how should we understand the I and me, the not-I and the not-me, from Descartes to Kant to Sartre.

How is the transcendental ego distinct from the empirical ego? What is the transcendental field? How does transcendence differ between individuals, different I’s, that is, if they have suspended their beliefs and action-orientations in the everyday world?

Narcissism has been defined as primary or secondary. The contradiction in the primary narcissistic position is the notion that we can see ourselves, that we can perceive our potentialities. What is the entity that sees itself? Our subjectivity is composed of an agential and a receptive side, is this a sort of I-to-I relationship that displaces external reality, even that which comes from within, upon one’s own subjectivity. This seems to be a self-deception. Secondary narcissism is the more easily understood self-love of self-presentation – to be admired and worshipped. Cool and in the right trendiness. Beneath the notion of trendiness lies the dark desire and manipulative ideological truths we ever disavow, mainly in a cynical perspective of “I know but ever so I go with the flow”.

Concerning trends, Husserl points out that the problems of subjectivity involves constitutiveness, namely, genesis and becoming. Horkheimer and Adorno felt that society was a panoply of rackets, namely, gangs and organizations. Volker Heins mentions two trends: restricted opportunities to participate in the social world, and increased opportunities to communicate via the Internet!

The narcissist’s “objective” influence or structuring is a problem. The narcissist, in this case not dissimilar to others like paranoids, thinks that the world, their world is real, and not a claim to reality like any other claim.

Well that’s you. I was discussing normal guys in the current culture. You’re not claiming normalcy and mediocrity are you? Husbands in our culture are in a legally subordinated position in a lot of ways. It doesn’t mean that nobody is alpha-ing their way through it, it just means that a guy better know an awful lot about our culture to avoid being seen as a beta by his soon-to-be heifer.

I don’t disagree. We’re not talking about fear or any feelings here at all, though. As for me, I was talking about the legal structure of marriage and how it automatically, legally disempowers (beta-izes) males. When a woman knows that she can rout a man legally, it would be hard for her to see him as some indomitable alpha, in most cases. I don’t have a horse in this race though—not married, never will.

Flip it around. What if your wife starts nagging and you can then threaten to call the police and have her locked up? And both of you very clearly know that that’s the case. Or threaten her with divorce knowing that the moment you file, you will no longer have to work ever, and that she will have an added 10-20 years tacked on to her work life. Oh and barring a meth addiction, you get the kids. And if you want to accuse her of pedophilia in court, the judge will immediate side with you and start a line of hostile questioning towards your wife over why she volunteers to tutor math (happened to my male friend irl). Really try to imagine being in that position to get an idea of the cards they’re holding.

But we agree, don’t we? We’re in an era where true masculinity is required for survival.

I’m going to reply to mersonia’s inquiry about marriage as soon as I can pull my thoughts together, but I can say this much right now.

It doesn’t matter what the courts or judges or cops can do. In vetting a chick for suitability, a man has to be able to suss out what her character is beyond sex and making a killer dinner. I’ve always maintained that most men neglect this aspect, or don’t find it Important.

Your woman should never threaten you, and you should have a well developed sense of what she thinks and how she perceives you Wrt the rest of Society. This is why finding a woman for purposes outside of sex is so difficult and time consuming. It’s also why men should interact with as many women as possible as often as possible, while reading them all like a good book.

I can assure you, my wife wouldn’t use police or courts against me in that manner for a multitude of reasons. She could go totally feral tomorrow, but the legal system isn’t in the cards.

If you don’t or can’t vet these broads, you put yourself at great risk. Stay single.

“after we talked he confessed that he was the commenter here. He’d made the trip to the convention to meet me face to face, to thank me for my work”

classy as hell. Rollo is just like the guy who steps between the gunfire and the women and children. He fucking saves lives by his very nature. beautiful. at the first whiff of smoke or the first pop of a rifle I’m pushing over the women and children in the theater to get to the exit. then I’m running like a coward and not looking back. shelter in place when you don’t have control of the situation makes no sense to me at all. run your ass off makes perfect sense though

I hope every life Rollo saves gives him more power to do it again and again. like bringing guys back from the dead. lazarus? maybe that story is about zeroing out and coming back with a little help from your friends?

it is currently possible to exist in an almost constant state of zeroness. red pill mindset is required. as is the zenish idea of karma. not the fucking john lenon what goes around comes around hippy karma, but the contradisctory idea of letting go of attachment to outcomes (though not effort). this is the real i don’t give a fuck and the one that chicks vibe on. not the pouty face poor me i don’t care what happens because i’m afraid to declare intent because i’m afraid of rejection kind that makes their pussies dry up

I do love the fact that any time I want I can put a double barrel to my forehead. or jump off something tall. or blast my veins with junk and disappear in a fog

but that seems totally illogical because it leaves no room to maneuver. barring some impossible lazarus shit, it’s actually final. but every fucking day there is something new. I’d hate to eat the bullet the day before my greatest shadenfradue fantasies finally come true. also there are too many chicks to bang. and too much cool shit to do. you have to do like 200 solo jumps before anyone will even let you look at a wingsuit.

to every guy thinking about punching his ticket: go ahead, but odds are you haven’t flown in a wingsuit yet. and that shit exists, along with so much other stuff you haven’t even considered. and there is red pill and game and pua game. don’t you at least want to try it all out before you turn out the lights for good?

but maybe these guys realize on some core level that they shouldn’t really be alive at that age. sure, some lucky stone age motherfuckers made it to 50 or whatever, but most dudes were gone in their 30s and before

maybe these guys being kept alive by statins and insulin and white knight wishes are better off dead. women don’t know what to say to comfort them because women know they shouldn’t be here to be needing comfort. they should have died a violent death during a hunt or a raid or a fight after blasting as many hotties with spunk as they could

A read of John Hersey’s War Lover is instructive. The punch line (and is it ever a punch) comes at the end. It is a good read and worth your time. Especially if you want a look at the social conditions in England/America during WW2.

I’ve never been in a “serious” relationship, so my own experience is limited, but if a man settles down with a woman I can’t really see how he won’t be automatically less desirable — even if it is only by a small degree, as he is no longer the thing she wanted but couldn’t entirely have. At the very least, the uncertainty of her becoming a permanent recipient of his valued attention is lost. When you’re single and have a woman who is dying to be your partner, they value you and your attention and savour every moment they’re around it, and they want it to be constant. Once it becomes constant or something she is sure will always have access to, one way or another, then that desire reduces. But, as I said, if you can say otherwise please do as I would like to know.

@Westray
Regarding your comment on how married men lose power to the state in today’s culture by getting married. I agree 100%, but Blaximus is making me think otherwise.

@Blaximus
You’re saying that if a man screens thoroughly, has the right frame and game then his wife using the system against him will be an inconceivable thought to her, right? I like that, I like that alot. It gives me hope, lol. No matter how bleak you think a situation is, with the right tools, metaphorically speaking, you can always make it work for you.

“Your woman should never threaten you, and you should have a well developed sense of what she thinks and how she perceives you Wrt the rest of Society.”

agree. she should worship you to the point you can do no wrong

“This is why finding a woman for purposes outside of sex is so difficult and time consuming.”

agree. they are all narcs. realize that every piece of potential damaging info she has on you will come to light. there are no secrets between two people, especially when one of them is a woman.

“It’s also why men should interact with as many women as possible as often as possible, while reading them all like a good book.”

agree. this is one benefit of hanging around with shitbags. one by one you watch their women bring them down in one way or another. usually it involves running their mouths to the authorities. you can’t know what your woman will do in the interrogation room until she’s left it. the one who sleeps next to me kept her fucking mouth shut like I told her and everything worked out fine like I told her. she never brings up her loyalty either. never. she understands that when it comes to that, “what have you done today?” is the only thing that counts

“I can assure you, my wife wouldn’t use police or courts against me in that manner for a multitude of reasons.”

why did mine keep her mouth shut? fear. same reason she would keep her mouth shut in court. I’ve told her that she can and would twist every fucking aspect of our relationship if it suited her. once she started, it would be a non-stop avalanche of verbal abuse, physical abuse, rape, intimidation, sexual deviancy, moral deviancy, illegal activity…. she would claim she wasn’t responsible for any of it, including all the orgasms. I forced her to have those too

me: “you’d say I’m a monster. and you’d have tons of proof. you can’t count the number of bruises you’ve had from bites alone. people will believe your story because it’s true”

her: “no”

me: “cute, but you’re a woman. that’s how it works”

her: “no. you’d kill me”

and there it is. that 0-100 in one second temper that women complain about…. that’s the thing that kept them alive for 50,000 years

her survival strategy was to find the most dangerous male she could…. and then fuck him so good that he’d never hurt her too much. sounds pretty stone age to me. also she is useful as hell. to the point that her absence would be more than just an inconvenience. clever girl